A trip to the Twilight Zone of the Monday Morning Seminar...

Monday mornings have the reputation of being dull & unexciting, especially if the weekend has been enjoyable, which it usually is, BECAUSE it's a weekend! And this Monday morning seminar (with the Mr E Chickens) started just like any other, though it was more typical for a Monday in spring as we had some good old fashioned English drizzle today...

I always ask the students how they are, and if they have anything interesting that they'd like to say...it can lead to a funny or unusual story...and today it began quite normally - the first 2 girls told 'normal' stories...and then it began to go a bit 'odd' ;-)

One girl, who is involved in the theatre, told us how they performed a new play which was a mime, and concentrated on the life of an embryo before birth. This girl played a sperm, and she mimed for us in the class how she impregnated the egg, which was quite artistically done. Apparently, 10 people played the part of the soon-to-be-born child!

Two girls later led us to an interesting story where this one particular girl told us that she'd been to the circus, and she'd seen a bear riding a motorbike! As if that wasn't odd enough, she then told us that she'd seen two bears riding a bike! And she showed us the film on her mobile phone!! There used to be an old song called 'Simon Smith and his amazing dancing bear'. (see the Muppets version!)..seems like times have moved on since then! Here are bears who have clearly been inspired by Steve McQueen (in The Great Escape)... I'd love to see the Olomouc Police dealing with these guys around town! Surreal...

The next girl (and YES! It was mainly the girls who were odd today, and not Vojta of My Little Pony fame! He was very normal today :-) ), then told us how she & her classmate (sitting next to her) were going to do a Shakespeare Rap this next weekend, to the music of Vivaldi! :-O Surely a MUST-SEE! The one was quite insistent that she's only doing it so that she can have white hair...I told her a week as a teacher could fix that ;-) It made me think...well, I've heard of the Harlem Shake...what about a Harlem Shakespeare? :-) Imagine the scene...a room full of people...and one starts to quote Shakespeare...and then EVERYBODY'S at it! Cool!! :-)

It was then that I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some people in the park opposite SGO, in the 'chabaští' (one of my favourite Czech words, meaning thick undergrowth!)...and two were taking a picture of one posing with a very long stick (it reminded me of Vic Reeves Big Night Out, a surreal comedy show which featured...The Man With A Stick! "What's on the end of the stick, Vic?") Perhaps by now, I should have been hearing the music from the Twilight Zone - that old Sci-Fi series which told stories of the strange and unusual things that happen in the world of Sci-Fi...only this was very real!

Surely that was enough for today!?? But no! There was a story about Prostejov hospital, and the girl was made to wait by a nurse who was having her lunch...(the sound of cutlery being used was heard, but was it leftovers and some instruments?!)...and then the girl who wanted white hair told us that she'd had a dream (in English) where everyone was singing...like an opera, involving some ill-fated affair of the heart...which led the previous hospital girl to tell us that she'd had a dream which had French sub-titles!

By now, I was feeling very confused, disorientated, and sort of longing for an ordinary Monday :-)
(But it WAS fun!!)

And then in my very last lesson today, the class mistakenly assumed that they had a free lesson (because the other half did) and so they jumped ship, as we say...but that has a happy ending...Mrs L is onto it! :D

The secret life of students....

I was reminded of an old TV sitcom from when I was a youth - 'Please, sir!'. There was a student called Dennis, and his favourite line was 'Please, sir. I want to be a horse.' Why did I have this flashback? Well, yesterday, one of my male students informed me that he always wanted to act, and his dream was to play the role of a Princess :-) 'Please, sir. I want to be a Princess,' does have a certain flair to it...perhaps a step up from wanting to be a horse?

In the same seminar, I also discovered that one girl, who was at a House Party somewhere in Slovakia, was in need of a taxi ride home - she couldn't find one, and being the worse for drink, she's not quite sure what happened...but she knows that a police car took her to where she was staying! I didn't realise that the Slovakian police were so accommodating! Maybe she can upgrade next time to this? :-)

And even today, I discovered how a romance budded between 2 shy classmates which resulted (somehow) in their first date being in a cemetery! How romantic!! I guess it was quite a grave experience, but led to something deeper? :-) It won the prize for giving me the biggest laugh this week (so far!). 

Even teachers can be taught

One of the great things about my job is when a student can teach me something. Some teachers, sadly, live under the illusion that they are the source of all knowledge on any given topic. That is not my case. Even at my age, I love to learn. And this week, one of my students educated me and introduced me to the unusual world of 'Extreme Ironing'!! Does such a thing exist? Well, a simple search on the internet, such as typing in 'extreme ironing pictures' will lead you to wonderful images like these:

As you can see, there is a whole world of insanity, still waiting to be explored :-)

So...there is the challenge...can extreme ironing be done at SGO? :-) 

Challenge accepted...anyone?